"Liana Downey & Associates joined us in 2012 to help us accelerate NYC Department of Education's college and career ready agenda. Liana and her team dug in with our Office of Academics around the challenge we were seeing across the city. They met with many members of our office, and quickly became versed in the work and our approach to managing this critical agenda in the nations largest school system. Liana was able to organize and clarify our team's strategy, and excelled at using it to build collaboration across the 5 major teams. Additionally, she provided excellent training on operationalizing our strategy both internally and across the Department. The planning Liana did with us has served as guiding principles for our work, and played a critical role in helping the city's college readiness rates continue to climb"

"We engaged Liana Downey & Associates in 2011 to provide strategic advisory services in connection with an innovative collaboration between our department and community. In essence, we were incubating an ambitious whole-systems approach to working with communities experiencing the greatest disadvantage, with the aim of achieving transformation over a generation. Liana is a delight to partner with. She is not only professional and approachable, but also highly intelligent and empathetic. Her work was of the highest quality. Liana and her team worked in a genuinely collaborative way and were able to navigate the needs, interests, language and demands of a range of stakeholders. Liana is also able to attract people to work with her who share these capabilities and her strong values base."

"Liana is one of the most inspiring and talented people I've had the pleasure of working with. She turns chaos into order, finds common ground among complex webs of stakeholders, and builds and manages highly effective teams that make sure the right stuff gets done at the right time, maximizing impact. In particular, the work she led on climate change in Australia had enormous impact on the response by the government and social sector in that country, turning a mess of disconnected sector-specific research and speculation into a synthesized, actionable road-map that can still be found on the walls of lawmakers in the nation's capital, 5 years later."

"Ms Downey provided excellent content and leadership to a project that required a very high level of senior executive involvement. She won the respect of these leaders through the thoughtful and challenging process as well as the richness of the outcome. She is not afraid to challenge, but does so in a manner that instills confidence and does not affront. I would be very happy to re-engage Ms Downey and can recommend her highly for strategic insight, rigorous analysis and project leadership."

"The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) engaged Liana Downey & Associates to conduct a Business Opportunity Assessment to establish Indigenous fire abatement projects in five locations across northern Australia. Liana Downey and her team undertook extensive consultations with members of three Indigenous land councils and ranger groups, and demonstrated intimate knowledge of national and international carbon markets, sophisticated financial analysis skills and business acumen, and excellent understanding of governance principles. The ILC would have no hesitation in engaging Liana Downey & Associates in the future."

"Liana has exceptional strategic skills, and is also very practical - a great combination. She sees issues on the horizon well before they arise. Liana also has an emphathetic management style, which enables her to get good results from teams. She is a first class executive."